You've Got Another Thing Coming

When the sun rose over the tree tops and coloured the sky a beautiful orange we stepped outside the enormous gates of the castle.

I stretched my arms above my head and yawned enormously, making my two travel buddies look at me awkwardly.
Without even blushing I let my hands fall limp by my sides and shrugged lazily.

“So,” I looked at them. “Where to?”

Cherokee glared at me and mumbled something to his sister from the corner of his mouth. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but by the look on Rose’s gorgeous face I’d say she did not appreciate his words.

“That’s just mean, Cher!” she wailed and slapped him on the arm. “Don’t be too judgmental!”

I snorted loudly. “Cher?” I wondered.

Cherokee snapped his blonde pretty head in my direction and hissed a resounding “What!” in, what seemed to me, the most polite manner he could summon up in my company.
I felt my eyes widen and I held my hands up protectively in front of me.

“Nothing!” I assured him, and his tense posture relaxed from ‘ready to spring’ to ‘not going to kill you this very moment’.

“It’s just that...” I continued, and he immediately went back into murder-mode, “that Cher is the name of a very famous singer.”

“Oh,” Rose smiled happily and patted her brother on the very arm she had just slapped.
“That’s cool! Did you hear, Cherokee? You’re named after a celebrity!”

Cherokee frowned and did not seem as pleased by the news as his sister.

“So,” she continued rashly. “Is he hot?”

“Who?” I wondered, scanning my brain for a good excuse as why to think her brother was not attractive, but coming up short.

However, faith and fortune smiled upon me as Rose, with a great, great smile, said:
“The singer, silly! Is he hot?”

I choked. “Cher? Uh, I suppose it depends on how you define ‘hot’.”

“Fine,” Rose sighed, but did not let her smile falter one bit. “Do you think he’s hot?”

I grinned to myself as I saw the famous female singer in front of my eyes, dancing and grinding against a load of sailors in the music video.

“Nope,” I answered honestly. “She doesn’t do anything for me.”

Rose had listened intently to my answer, but it was two voices that met my statement with an incredible: “SHE?”

Cherokee had turned the colour of freshly pressed tomato juice, his forehead so creased his hairline almost collided with his eyebrow (which was an impressive deed as he had a very high and noble forehead). I suppressed a giggle and forced my smile into a frown which must have looked a bit stupendous, for Rose was by my side in an instant, wondering if I had hurt myself on a nasty thought.

Meanwhile, Cherokee had collected himself and conjured a map from nowhere, which he was now studying intently.

“It’s a long way to go,” he told us as we, after a little struggle with the package, walked closer to the edge of the forest outside the castle. “It’s going to be dangerous, too, so Rose; you stick with me.”

Rose nodded, severe. “I won’t be out of your sight”, she promised her brother. “And Callie won’t be out of mine.”

I felt a little twinge of joy by her last words, but Cherokee looked as if he’d rather she kept that line between the two of us. His bad mood didn’t seem to catch his sister’s attention, though, and I realised she must be used to this kind of behaviour from his side.
He suddenly stopped and pulled out the map, surveyed our surroundings closely and then came to a conclusion:

“We’ve arrived.”

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We stood in a small clearing, nothing but trees surrounding us. We were still very close to the forest line, and I could see the tip of a tower in the castle’s direction.

“We’re there?” I wondered, amazed. “This is your dangerous, very deadly, not-all-of-us-are-going-to-make-it-back journey?” I snorted. “There’s more danger involved in going down to my local super market!”

Rose grabbed my hand in quiet horror and hushed me fervently. She slid behind my back, staring in between the darkness of the tree trunks. Her small body trembled.
Cherokee, on his hand, had put away the map and instead now sported a very lethal-looking sword.

“Stand back,” he ordered, and Rose and I willingly backed away to the edge of the clearing.

We watched as Cherokee lift his sword and thrust it as hard as he could in the ground. Specks of dirt flew everywhere, but the blade started glowing, emitting a bright light so luminous that it blinded all three of us. Cherokee staggered backwards, protecting his eyes from the light, and soon he was by our side.

“Rose!” he roared. “The trees! Now!”

And Rose followed his orders. In one swift movement she was climbing up a tree trunk, her eyes still closed as she found a safe way up the branches.

Her brother was already a few feet in front of me when I realised that there was something coming out of the light; a creature without a solid form oozed from the wound Cherokee had created in the ground. It shifted shapes repeatedly, growing and growing until it had absorbed all the light with its own darkness.

My back hit a tree and I noticed I was backing away without even thinking about it. I watched in horror as Cherokee rushed towards the dark shape, brandishing another sword apart from the one in the ground. He screamed something at a foreign language and charged the creature.
It slid away from his attack, uttering something so unbelievably ugly that it could only be its own native tongue, and then the shadow laughed.

Although, I believe it to be wrong to call it a laugh; there was no joy involved, only true hatred for the blonde man who was now readying himself for another attack.

The creature was too awful to even describe. It was the kind of thing I only dreamed about in my darkest nightmares; it was the foremost reason as to why I now decided that there had to be a hell: nothing so frightening should be allowed to share the earth with decent people.

Cherokee steadied himself, I saw as he squared his shoulders and dug his feet into the grass, and a nanosecond later the creature swiped him off his feet, tossing him across the small clearing. He hit the trees with a sickening noise.

“NO!” I shouted, up till now I had been too horrified to even speak. “You ugly shitfaced son of a bitch!”

I screamed and I yelled, I stomped my foot and I grit my teeth, and the creature took notice of me. It started gliding towards me, its ever-growing frame soaking up all the light, all the air and I could hardly think straight.

I insulted it, I cursed it, and I believe I even brought in a donkey’s behind, a shovel and a pile of excrements into my rant to try and explain my feelings about this thing that so cruelly hovered inches away from me.

I was in the middle of quoting Monty Python’s The Quest for the Holy Grail, a very fitting description of the thing’s parents, when the creature suddenly howled in agony.
Its screams made my eardrums hurt and my brain want to commit suicide, but as soon as the screaming had begun it stopped.

The creature started shrinking, mute with pain as large holes appeared through it, emitting all the light it had absorbed before.
In a moment, the thing vanished from the face of the earth.

I stared unbelievingly in front of me where, just a few seconds ago, the creature had doubled over me in an I-really-want-to-have-you-for-lunch-type manner. Now Cherokee stood there, panting heavily with a sword thrust forward where the creature’s heart had just been.

Or so I suspected.

“Cherokee!” Rose appeared out of nowhere and tossed herself around her brother’s neck, hugging him for dear life. “Don’t ever do that to me again, you hear? I swear I’ll tell Mom if you do!”

Cherokee simply kissed his sister’s forehead and mildly shoved her off, but took a steady hold of her hand. Without a word he approached me and with his other hand grabbed my arm and dragged Rose and I towards the place where the creature had first come from.

The first sword stood there still, but by its edge there was a large hole in the ground, blackened as if someone had been burning leaves in it.

“We’ve arrived,” Cherokee stated once again, and I looked at the hole. In front of our eyes it widened, deepened and generally expanded until it was a cave leading straight down into the ground, large enough for even Cherokee to walk upright through.

“The gate keeper has been defeated,” Cherokee said ominously. “Our journey has now begun.”

With this he grabbed his first sword and forced it into my hands, keeping the second one for himself.

“You’re going to need it,” was all he said, and then he began leading us down the opening.